Every week, Kate Lanier assembles the most important global energy and climate news, including:

New England: Off the coast of New England, sea surface temperatures “are flashing red, showing an extreme warm anomaly.” That’s a direct, immediate link to the recent record snowfall in Boston. Expect more.

California: Stunning state-wide fracking waste water test results: “concentrations of the human carcinogen benzene … [at] levels thousands of times greater than state and federal agencies consider safe.” ‘Significant’ benzene levels were in 98% of the water samples. Not only that, but CA “inadvertently” allowed frackers to inject their “flowback water into protected aquifers containing drinking water.” LA Times says “halt new operations.”

Peru: Oil contamination by Argentina’s Pluspetrol in the Peruvian Amazon so upset indigenous people that they “stormed a military base being used by Pluspetrol as a storage area.” Pluspetrol is packing up and leaving Peru—and the government “is investigating the illegal use of firearms by police during the demonstrations.”

Kate Lanier’s collects global energy and climate news. This week, she has a special focus on the fight over the Keystone XL Pipeline in Congress including:

Keystone XL Pipeline, US Senate: Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) of the senate’s Energy and Natural resources Committee blasted the Senate’s Keystone XL pipeline bill. Sanders is concerned about the US Senate rejecting science and efficient renewable energy, while Warren concentrated on the pipeline benefitting the Canadian oil industry and not US families. Update: “Democrats plan tough votes for GOP on Keystone pipeline bill.”

Meanwhile, from Vatican City: Pope Francis has added his voice in opposition to mining, fracking, and disregard for the earth in general. He appears in a movie, La Guerra Del Fracking de Pino Solanas (The Fracking War), banned in Argentina (where the government calls fracking “non-conventional gas”), but now on YouTube.” Pope Francis also spoke to the urgency of focusing on youth, the future.

Alabama: Radioactive (tritium) leak at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant near Athens, after which TVA said “the leak was quickly contained and presented no public risk.” Not the only TVA radioactive leak, nor the only one at Browns Ferry.